"Biomass Energy" is Bad News for Our Forests

On the false pretenses of suppressing wildfires and providing renewable energy, the government is funding businesses to degrade our forests, calling it "restoration"

What is the biomass energy industry, how are we subsidizing it, and how does it serve to eliminate our forests, including their role in bird habitat, flood control and drought prevention?

This piece of equipment is a feller-buncher. It cuts the tree at the base, shaves off the limbs, then drops the log onto a pile. This is in Lewis & Clark National Forest, Montana. Government and industry seek to take this type of harvesting to a whole new level and calling it “restoration.” Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Issues addressed herein:

1. How are government and industry using our tax dollars to subsidize the degradation of our forests?

2. What is the Biomass Feedstock National User Facility?

3. Why are taxpayers removing the risk from investors? Is it our job to reduce the investors’ risk?

4. What does it really mean to remove “biomass” from our forests? What are they really talking about?

5. Why does biomass removal cause flooding?

6. How does biomass removal degrade the soil?

7. How does biomass removal help cause wildfire?

8. Is biomass energy renewable?

The Biomass Feedstock National User Facility resides at the Idaho National Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy and formerly the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

You can see their website here: Biomass Feedstock National User Facility - Idaho National Laboratory.

Their website reads as follows:

The Biomass Feedstock National User Facility (BFNUF) offers technology and expertise to help the U.S. bioenergy industry overcome biomass challenges during scale up and integration of biomass preprocessing facilities.

So their stated purpose is to help “industry” and to help them “scale up.” In other words, their goal is to increase the scale of the industry.

The BFNUF is a congressionally designated, national asset designed to help de-risk the scale up of bioeconomy. A reconfigurable preprocessing testbed that is utilized by both public and private sectors, the BFNUF can be utilized to rapidly scale up new processes.

They seek to “de-risk the scale up.” In other words, they are taking the risk out of the equation for investors. The investments they are referring to include facilities that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, these are Wall Street investors that include massive hedge funds.

The message is that our job as taxpayers is to reduce the risk that investors face. Our job is to increase the certainty that when they put money in, they will get money back out.

Here are two shared documents that I invite you to peruse.

SSF Webinar & Transcript 9/11/26 - Google Docs

SSF Webinar & Transcript 1/21/26 - Google Docs

These documents contain the links to the webinar recordings and also the transcript to webinars that occurred on 9/11/25 and one on 1/21/26.

Based on the 9/11/25 webinar, here is a slide presentation that I prepared: Idaho National Laboratory - Google Slides

To me, this is one of the most important stories relating to our forests because of the increasing SCALE of the destruction.

What happens when you remove biomass from a forest?

When they remove biomass, they are removing carbon and water. And they are increasing carbon emissions.

When you remove biomass from a forest, you reduce the capacity of the forest to absorb carbon, because you are removing trees and plants, which would otherwise absorb carbon.

When you remove biomass from the forest, you invariably compact the soil, reducing the soil carbon and compromising the ability of the soil to absorb rainfall and grow plants and trees. Therefore, you can expect flooding.

Worldwide loss of soil moisture

We have been experiencing a worldwide loss of soil moisture, which is the subject of this slide presentation that I prepared: Seo Study in Hydrology - Google Slides

The authors of a March, 2025 study concluded that the soils of the earth have lost 2,623 billion tons of soil moisture since the year 2000. One solution is to allow our forests to grow and not remove biomass.

Preventing wildfire?

The people who are removing biomass are justifying this on the basis of reducing the risk of wildfire. The idea is that if you remove biomass from the forest, you are reducing “fuel.”

It sounds logical enough. But when you remove biomass, via “logging” or “thinning,” you are removing medium and large trees, which would otherwise cast shade, blocking the sun and preventing the “fuel” from drying out.

Also, when you remove biomass, you are removing the wind break that prevents the “fuels” from drying out. And when there is a fire, the wind sweeps through faster, fanning the flames and increasing the strength of the blaze.

This whole industry is based on false pretenses, and we taxpayers are paying for false solutions to wildfire and false solutions to “renewable energy.”

Is biomass energy renewable?

This slide presentation contains some really good resources for looking into the biomass energy industry: Biomass Energy v.2 - Google Slides

As it turns out, when you turn wood into wood pellets and burn them as fuel, this generates more carbon emissions per unit of energy than coal, and also more pollution per unit of energy.

The biomass energy industry relies upon flawed carbon math. The idea is that if you cut down the forest and burn it, the forest will grow back. One problem is that you are causing carbon emissions now, with the hope that future growth will re-absorb the carbon. Meanwhile, they are not accounting for the value of the forest as habitat, flood control and drought prevention.

I frequently quote regenerative farmer Joel Salatin, who said, “The tragedy of the human experience is not that we are lazy, but that we are busy doing the wrong things.

The biomass energy industry is a prime example of humans being busy doing the wrong things. And we taxpayers are footing the bill.

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Online Course and Speaker Series:

How Trees & Forests Shape Our Climate - Biodiversity for a Livable Climate …

Featuring eight great speakers who will teach us all about how trees & forests shape our climate. We will meet at noon Eastern time, each Thursday from Feb 5 through March 26. All meetings are recorded for those who cannot attend.

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Here is The Myth of Overgrown Forests. This is very important because, for one thing, who doesn’t love our forests? We all value and love our forests. And yet they are being pummeled by a greedy few, largely with our permission, because we have bought into false narratives about how our forests are overgrown and we need logging companies to get in there and remove the “excess fuel.”